Some would argue that gaining acceptance by the medical community is not the goal and I wholeheartedly agree. However, acknowledging the generally accepted statistic that chiropractic cares for 5% of the population, while medicine cares for 95% of the population, makes me pause to think about my strategy to accomplish my goal of having 100% of all Americans under chiropractic care.

I have been in chiropractic for 31 years and 30 years ago my biggest challenge was to neutralize the MD’s who did their best to prevent my patients from receiving a chiropractic adjustment. Today the pendulum has shifted and MD’s, both primary and specialists, are embracing chiropractic; the new goal is to get them to embrace the chiropracTOR, so that chiropracTIC wins. 

Last month, in Saddle Brook, New Jersey, after a presentation to lawyers on spinal injuries and spinal care, a neurosurgeon came up to me and 4 other chiropractors and solicited our opinion on patient care. He went on to state that he would like to continue the relationship with the local DC’s as part of his team when caring for his patients.

Two weeks ago, after another lecture in Chicago, 2 anesthesiologists and a physical medicine specialist who were in attendance approached me and wanted to know about protocols in utilizing chiropractic with their patients. The same situation occurred with a NY-based orthopedic surgeon on Long Island.

Recently, an internist inquired about sub-leasing to a chiropractor, as he felt that an in-house chiropractor was a good team solution to the non-surgical back cases that were clogging up his office.

In every scenario, these MD’s had seen the chiropractors’ curriculum vitae through attending lectures or having them as “ice breakers” for the relationships. These MD’s have also experienced the level of clinical excellence of the chiropractors through dialogue and treated them as colleagues instead of second class citizens.

This is the bridge to the 95% of the population. We, as a profession, have been going to the public for well over a millennium and have succeeded in reaching that 5% of the population, but the door was shut to organized medicine. Understand that organized medicine does not mean the doctor next door; it is the political and legislative machine that drives the laws and research dollars in our country. It is those two things that bring medicine the other 95% of the population by organized medicine’s lobbying efforts to secure public and private funding on issues like cancer and tooth decay, alike.

Can you imagine the government sponsoring a $10,000,000 research grant to the chiropractic profession on fighting “spinal decay through regular chiropractic adjustments?”

It starts by being on the “inside looking out” vs. being on the “outside looking in.”

If you are the “real deal through clinical excellence,” the medical community will embrace you. However, you must meet them on common ground, so they have a real concept of your level of excellence. It starts with a correctly formatted curriculum vitae (CV) displaying your level of education and knowledge through citations on the document. There are many avenues to get that into the hands of the MD’s and the easiest way is to send an evaluation report to every primary care physician of each of your patients and include a copy of your CV. This CV will also follow you to court on personal injury cases and in the insurance industry through managed care.

If you do not have a CV in admissible format, there is a free service at www.uschirodirectory.com that will walk you through the process of creating one. It is a five-minute process and you can print it out when it is completed.

Your CV is often the ice-breaker to relationships. However, if your knowledge base doesn’t reflect your CV, be prepared to be a “one-and-done.”

The common ground with the MD is knowledge of the spine (neuromuscular) and imaging (primarily, MRI). Those are the two areas in which you need to become expert.

Do not talk technique, because the MD could care less; they only care that you are the best at what you do and have the knowledge base and credentials to back it up. With today’s technology and our level of quality professional education, we must continually go beyond the subluxation in our desire to treat subluxation, and that journey must continue well beyond our professional diploma. It is solely our responsibility.

It is this type of clinical excellence and verification on our CV’s that will create that paradigm shift and have the medical profession running after us for solutions to their problems. Once that occurs, the population shift to chiropractic will gain momentum and start moving towards that 95% of the population, because we are the solution and no longer the problem.

In each instance I discussed, the MD’s reached out to the chiropractors because of their knowledge based on our common issues. Once there is a greater need for utilization nationally and we are on the “inside” of organized medicine, research grants, laws and public awareness will come much easier and with support.

Your job is to become clinically excellent beyond the adjustment and have it reflected in your CV.

Dr. Mark Studin is the President of CMCS Management which offers the Lawyers Marketing Program, Family/MD Marketing Program and Compliance Auditing services. He can be contacted at www.TeachChiros.com or call 1-631-786-4253.

If you had one wish, what would it be? It’s fun to imagine the possibilities. Most of us would choose something that we think would bring us happiness, which leads me to the next question. What makes you happy? Is it the thought of more money? A big house? Looking ten years younger? It may shock you to find out that these things really don’t bring us the pleasure that we think they will.

The field of positive psychology, a discipline that investigates what leads to happiness, has made a surprising discovery. Studies have shown that contentment and meaning in life are not achieved by winning the lottery or being young and beautiful. Instead, one source of happiness comes from the pursuit and attainment of goals.

Goals give new meaning to everything you do. Something that may be thought of as routine or mundane takes on new purpose when it is leading you one step closer to attaining a goal.

Goals give your life focus and clear direction. Those who don’t regularly set goals find themselves drifting through life, reacting to whatever comes their way. They base their decisions and actions on what their circumstances are at the present, not on what they hope to accomplish in the future. One day they find that days have turned into years and they’re so far off course that they can’t even remember the dreams they once had for their lives.

To make a lasting change or to achieve anything meaningful in your life requires knowing where you need to go and how you are going to get there. That is a goal. Every day, we choose whether the actions of that day are going to bring us closer to who we want to be and where we want to go, or further away.

Japanese carp grow according to the size of their environment. If they are kept in a small body of water, they reach full growth at two to four inches long. However, if they are placed in a larger tank, they can increase to many times that size.

Your goals determine your actions and habits. Your actions and habits determine your environment. The Japanese carp has no control over what kind of environment it is placed in, therefore it has no control over how large it will grow. However, we are free to overcome our limitations and live out our dreams, if we have the wisdom to set goals and the discipline to follow through.

Many people lack the understanding of what goals actually are, and that lack of understanding has prevented them from setting them. Some of you may have made a goal list in the past but, because you did not achieve what you aimed for, you didn’t repeat the process for fear of failing again. I understand completely. The worst kind of failure is failure to keep one’s word or commitment to one’s self.

A well structured goal list can only be made with a lot of forethought; otherwise it will only be a wish list. Those goals will remain a wish list unless you set a deadline and have an action plan for the completion of those goals.

A goal without a deadline is a wish, because there is no call to action to make the goal a reality.

Remember, if you shoot for the moon and land on a star—you are still on higher ground! For example, if you want your practice to double from $20,000 in collections per month to $40,000 in collections per month and you are only collecting $36,000 per month at the end of your deadline, don’t count this as a failure. Be assured, you have accomplished growth as a direct result of your efforts and your goals.

Challenge yourself to set goals and commit yourself to following through. A well thought out list of goals, an action plan, and a made up mind are crucial components in achieving the happiness and success that you are seeking for your life and practice.

Tom Owen III, President of AMC, lectures extensively from coast-to-coast to thousands of chiropractors and students annually. He is the author of Chiropractic from a Business Man’s Perspective, and has spent the last 25 years in the day-to-day trenches of the chiropractic profession. He lives by his quote that "In the end, all that is left are the lives we’ve touched and to what extent they were changed."

Dr. Osborne, a 1989 graduate of Palmer College, ran a successful high volume multiple doctor practice, and is currently Vice President of AMC, Inc., as well as an author and lecturer. Visit www.amcfamily.com or call (877) AMC-7117 for more information.